Chapter Eleven #2
Nonetheless, the Reaper was there. Close by. Watching her. Perhaps taking aim at Jackson.
“I brought you some stew,” Jackson said. “It’s hot and tasty. Figured you need to eat. We both need to keep up our strength. But not to fight each other. How about a truce?”
Just when she thought he’d lost his golden-boy charm, he proved her wrong.
Clenching her hands, she stood rooted to the spot, even though she had to leave. She wanted to give Jackson a sign. To let him know she was there. But she couldn’t risk it.
Leaves crunched as Alvaro swooped up behind her, his hand covering her mouth and nose with a cloth in his palm. His arm wrapped around her, pinning her against him.
She smelled something sickeningly sweet and cloying. Gagging on the scent, she didn’t fight him. If she drew attention to their position, Jackson would charge toward them and Alvaro would kill him.
“I’m sorry. For the way I spoke to you.” Jackson rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, and I don’t blame you, but can I come in? I’ll do all the talking. You just have to listen.”
Her head lolled back onto Alvaro’s chest. Fear coiled through her, threading in every fiber of her body. The world spun, branches and stars and sky blending. She tried to focus on the sound of Jackson’s voice in the distance, but it was fading. Her vision blurred as her legs buckled.
Alvaro swept her up into his arms and looked down on her face.
The devil smiled.
Darkness clawed at the edges of her vision, dragging her under, and Christina felt it in her bones—she was doomed.
Bitterroot Falls
Friday, April 13, 11:15 p.m.
JACKSON PACED BACK and forth in Chance’s kitchen. Pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, he tried and failed to control the panic pulsing through him.
Chance had already called in the IPS team for a huddle and assembled them when Jackson arrived. He looked around at all the people who had gathered to help—Bo Lennox, Eli Easton and Autumn Stratton, Winter’s older sister. Both DCI agents sat at the counter as well.
“Are you sure that she didn’t take off and kill the four patrol men on her way out of the camp?” Winter asked.
Sandbags of guilt settled on Jackson’s shoulders for going to the camp in the first place. Thinking that it would be safe for one night. Exposing Joe’s people to such danger.
Four men dead and they’d only been there for a matter of hours.
There’s no stopping him. No place is safe. Christina had warned Jackson, and he’d lowered his guard for a few minutes, and now she was gone.
“She is wanted for murder,” Declan said, “of three other people.”
Jackson stopped pacing and pressed his palms to the cool marble countertop. “Christina isn’t a murderer, okay? She’s many things.” A liar. A master manipulator. A survivor. “But a murderer isn’t one of them.”
“You’re sure?” Bo asked with a raised eyebrow. “You two have history. Maybe it’s clouding your judgment.”
“If it had been any other suspect in your custody,” Chance chimed in, “would you have broken protocol and fled the scene with that person?”
Jackson had asked himself the same things. Questioned and doubted Christina every step of the way. His decision to cautiously trust her wasn’t made lightly.
Eli sat in front of an open laptop, clacking away on the keyboard. “I tried to access the CCTV footage at the scene so we could see what happened at the airport for ourselves, but all the cameras went down right before the incident.”
Aguilar must have disabled them. To add confusion for the authorities.
Mirabal, Nichols and the higher-ups in the agencies wouldn’t have a clear picture of how things unfolded.
For all they knew, Jackson could’ve turned traitor and helped attack his own team.
They would be left to fill in essential blanks on their own, and he had yet to give them his version of the situation.
“You absconded with a former lover,” Winter said.
“That’s what happened. Now you’re wanted, too, and want to make us complicit.
I agreed to help raid the depots and I have a judge who is willing to get out of bed and sign a warrant.
But now Ortiz has disappeared. And Jackson, your story leaves me with a lot of troubling questions that you haven’t answered. I need to understand it.”
“Honey.” Chance put a hand on Winter’s arm, and she pursed her lips.
“You and Declan are free to walk away from this. We can handle it without you both if it’s too messy.
But I think I speak for every IPS member when I say that we don’t abandon our own.
We’re in. Whether Jackson’s story adds up or not.
Lockwood confirmed Christina Ortiz was an FBI asset.
He wants us to find her and keep her safe.
It doesn’t matter if she ran off or was taken. That’s our mission.”
“I’m just supposed to sit back and let my sister and you,” Winter said, pressing a palm to Chance’s cheek, “get involved. Incriminating yourselves. While I pretend this conversation never happened?”
“That’s the deal, honey. You make your choices, and I make my mine, and at the end of the day, we respect it.”
“We’re getting off track.” Autumn refilled her mug with coffee.
“Jackson, you said you caught Christina on the burner phone at the camp. Was that about an hour or so before you discovered she was gone? Maybe she didn’t kill anyone.
Maybe she contacted this hit man. If she did, we need to know. What’s his name again?”
“Alvaro Aguilar,” Bo said, looking down at notes he’d taken.
The group scrutinized every word out of Jackson’s mouth. Not that he could blame them. He was asking them to risk a lot, professionally and personally, to help him. Still, being grilled by six of them amounted to a tough interrogation.
“Look, I’m not a hundred percent certain that she didn’t leave the camp on her own.
All right?” Jackson’s voice was louder and sharper than he intended.
“I’m sorry. I know everyone is only trying to help.
” He sucked in a deep breath. “I caught Christina holding the phone. Not using it, per se. There were no calls made or texts sent from what I could see. That doesn’t mean she didn’t delete anything. ”
“There’s nothing I’d like more than to get to the bottom of this,” Eli said. “But we can’t mistake suspicion for certainty.” Eli held out his hand. “Give me the phone. I’ll comb through the metadata and we’ll see.”
Jackson pulled the burner from his back pocket and passed it to him.